I nearly missed that Zorras Bread Baking Day waked from its hibernation and that there is indeed a theme for February! But luckily I stumbled over Announcement of Ina-Christin who is its hostess in this month. And because she loves pretzels as much as I do she wishes us to to bring pretzel variations. This makes it easy to come up with a recipe for her.

I baked a Silserkanz, a Swiss speciality of six pretzel rolls forming a crown. The dough is nearly the same as in my pretzel roll recipe, I just used some milk instead of water. And I believe that this change make the crumb even a little bit more fluffy then the old variant.

For a spontaneous baking the Silserkranz turned out well. The next time I would just cut the rolls a little bit deeper to avoid the uncontrolled cracks that formed in some of the rolls. But this is just a minor drawback and only disturb my inner perfectionist.  The rolls are delicious and a eye catcher on every table!

Silserkranz

yields 2 crowns

Sweet Starter

• 150g sweet Starter
• 150g flour Type 550
• 75g Water

Dough

• 250g  flour Type 550
• 135g Water
• 20g Butter
• 10g Salt
• 5g Malzt (inactive)
• 5g fresh yeast

Lye

• 1 litre Water
• 40g NaOH

Topping

• coarse Salt

Mix the ingredients of the sweet starter and let it rise for 3-4 hours at 30°C.

Knead all ingredients for 10 min at slow speed.

Rest the dough for 30 min then divide the dough in 12 pieces of 65g each.

Roll each piece to a ball.

Proof for 30 min at room temperature and another 60 min in the fridge without a cover.

Dissolve the NaOH in  30°C warm water and dip the rolls in the lye, then take them out with a skimmer. Place on a paper lined baking tray, so that 6 rolls form one crown, with a little bit space between the rolls.  Sprinkle with coarse sea and slash lengthwise.

Bake at 230°C for 20 min. After 5 min open the oven door shortly to release the steam from the rolls.